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Comment by Teichopsia | Hacker News Reader

Five comments so far and the opinions are on both ends. Do keep in mind that there have been many articles touting how man X hours one can be productive. It is not only, what, 7 hours or so at school doing work, but the time before to wake up, get ready, commute, school, commute back. Then home, homework and chores. They are children. If we are "complaining" as adults about about workload.... you get the idea.

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Teenagers are minors, but not "children". Painting them as "children" leads to silly things like a 16-year-old being considered a child right up until birthday 17, at which point they can join the army.

Holes appear in the story in the article when things like "seven straight hours" - do kids not get lunch or recess breaks anymore? It's clear the teen is overstating the case to make it sound worse. That doesn't mean there's no problem to address, but I wouldn't take the statement on face value. I'm also not sure I'd take that letter as typical (for an adult, let alone a young teen), given the quality of the prose.

Recess isn't a thing in high school. Most lunches are squeezed in 30-45 minute periods where they often are studying or doing homework. At my high school we got 25 minutes of lunch, including time to get to the cafeteria and back to class

And also, the classes are so short - the amount of homework the teachers assign sort of makes sense, in that they only see the kids for maybe 45 minutes a day. Which means the kids are being jolted from one intellectual pursuit to another every 45 minutes. How do you teach anything in 45 minutes? How do you learn 7 or 8 different topics in 45 minute chunks, one after the other?

I have trouble context shifting between three tasks a day. Sucks to think kids have to do this 5-8 times a day

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